Construction and test of the precision drift chambers for the ATLAS muon spectrometer

The monitored drift tube (MDT) chambers for the muon spectrometer of the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) consist of three or four layers of pressurised drift tubes on either side of a space frame carrying an optical deformation monitoring system. The chambers have to provide a track position resolution of 40 /spl mu/m with a single-tube resolution of at least 80 /spl mu/m and a sense wire positioning accuracy of 20 /spl mu/m (rms). The feasibility was demonstrated with the full-scale prototype of one of the largest MDT chambers with 432 drift tubes of 3.8 m length. For the ATLAS muon spectrometer, 88 chambers of this type have to be built. The first chamber has been completed with a wire positioning accuracy of 14 /spl mu/m (rms).